Trying to catch up on sharing our experiences in Ukraine …
Our friend Oksana, once a well-known television host and now a professor of Journalism at Zhytomyr University invited us to speak with her class. It was especially meaningful for our IR journalist, Sonny Tapia. We had barely begun when the air-raid siren sounded. Without panic, without hesitation, the entire class quietly gathered their things and moved toward the shelter. In fact, the whole university went underground calmly, orderly and quickly.
Sitting in the shelter, I had the chance to speak with a few of the young students. One young woman, just 18, told me she was 14 when the full-scale invasion began. Four years. When I asked how life feels now, what “normal” means, she looked down for a moment and said sadly, “I don’t remember normal.”
She has lived nearly four years with constant threat, with the reality of missiles hitting cities, with air raid sirens interrupting sleep, school, childhood. There was a sadness in her eyes that no young person should ever have to carry. She lost four years of being a carefree teenager. Four years of safety. Four years of becoming herself.
Another student shared that she had wanted to study medicine but didn’t pursue it because doctors are conscripted. She was afraid. She told me many of her friends had wanted to become doctors or dentists but chose different paths, simply to avoid the possibility of being pulled into the war. These are the subtle, profound costs – the ways war shapes futures not yet lived.
Later, Dr. Vitali Khomenko, the orthopedic surgeon we work closely with, spoke to us as a father. He said he is always afraid. Yesterday, during an air raid, he called his daughter to make sure she was safe. She answered from a shelter, calmly reading a book. This has become her “normal.” He cannot leave the hospital to protect her, even if there were a way to protect a child from missiles. The expression of fear, agony said everything.
Last night the sirens began at 12:03 a.m. and did not stop until 6 a.m. An all-country alert, missiles launched from Belarus, their targets unknown. Kyiv was hit heavily. Oksana told me she grabbed her 5 year old son and held him tightly as they slept in a hallway, waiting for the danger to pass.
It is hard to imagine living this way for almost four years. Imagine the toll it takes on the human spirit, on mental health. The sheer exhaustion of unrelenting fear.
Yet people continue. They teach. They study. They heal others. They carry on.
Bearing witness to this is both heartbreaking and humbling.
